Depression

Good morning little Gems!

Today before school Bunch and I were talking, and she mentioned a billboard she saw that says something like:

YOU NEVER HEAR
"SNAP OUT OF IT,
IT'S JUST DIABETES"
Visit DepressionIsReal.org

And then I read a poignant post about depression by a woman I greatly admire on a blog I read.

Reading the comments on that post made me feel like I've been behaving a bit like Golum most of my life, hiding out in the dark caves, in denial with myself about my depression.

Well, it's time to come out of the dark. (Oooh, bright light, bright light!)

Last October I wrote a post I titled "The Meadow", in which I described feeling happy. At the time I felt impressed that I needed to record those feelings, which I did in that post. (If you'd like to go read that post before you continue, I'll wait for you right here.)

Welcome back! Anyway, little did I know that less than two weeks after writing those feelings down, two things would occur that would throw me into a deep depression. We're talking the ultimate Funky Town.

In hindsight, I feel like that season of simple, daily happiness was a tender mercy from God, given to me so that I'd know that there was a different way to experience life. That some people feel happy like that on a regular basis. That my decades of feeling like I was dragging myself along wasn't the only way to feel.

My long-term bloggy buddies may recall that I "took a break" from writing for a few months, and kind of went into hiding for a while...wrestling with myself and what I was feeling. It's a common response to stress...fight or flight. I flew (naturally!)

I wasn't doing very well. In fact I kind of bottomed out for a bit there.

A few months ago, Doc, who was doing his psychiatry rotation at the time, wondered aloud if I was dysthymic.

"What's that?" I asked him. He told me to google dysthymia, which I did.

And I spent hours that day reading everything I could find about this condition. Because there was my Entire Life, defined in print.

Facing the news that I was depressed made me even more depressed. It felt like a personal failing on my part. Like something I should have been able to prevent, by just Thinking Better Thoughts, or Handling Situations Better. Being More Positive. Or Being More Grateful. Trying Harder. Or Eating More Chocolate (kidding).

Whenever I heard someone compare depression to diabetes, I focused on the more preventable forms of diabetes...the kind that the person contributes to because of their dietary and lifestyle choices. They, like me, should have done something to prevent it...right?!

Hearing about dysthymia was revelatory. I'd seen various counselors through the past 20 years, and NO ONE had ever mentioned it..which is shocking to me. I've felt this way as long as I can remember, till last fall when I had that season of Happy Blue, when I thought I'd somehow finally Arrived, and was Done With The Darkness. Forever!

It wasn't till that experience that I knew for myself a different way of feeling actually existed. I'd always compared my life to those around me, and figured that how I felt was as good as it gets.

But it's not.

Depression is NOT as good as it gets. Depression is like a gray film on reading glasses. It colors everything with a drab wash. And that's just the mild form of it. At times, the hopelessness and frustration can be so overwhelming that death seems like the only relief. Being severely depressed is like being in a smoke filled room, and it's killing you, but the only way out is to run through the fire. But you're terrified of being disfigured and destroyed...it seems much worse than the smokey room, so you stay put, slowly having the life choked out of you.

When I was growing up, I spent years praying every night that I would die in my sleep. I didn't want to commit suicide...I was sure I'd go straight to hell if I did that. And hell was pretty low on my sight-seeing list even back then. I was also afraid of pain, and was sure that dying was the most painful thing out there. But I was so sad all the time, that death seemed like the only way out. My prayers generally went something like "Dear Heavenly Father, I miss you. I'm so homesick for a real home. Please just take me back tonight! In a twinkling, or peaceful way. I can't take this life any more. In Jesus' name, amen" And every morning when I woke up I figured He didn't want me either.

Eventually I gave up the Praying For Death route, and adopted a Pretend I'm Okay and Make The Best Of It approach. That's been my modus operandi ever since.

I didn't want to cop to being depressed. I couldn't handle there being something else wrong with me. If the thought that I was depressed ever came up, it made me mad. Kind of like when anyone hinted that my mood could be PMS. How DARE they minimize my feelings by writing it off as mere hormones?!

But in recent months as I've hit bottom, I've learned a lot about depression. There is (and likely always will be) a stigma associated with it. If you struggle with depression, you have likely felt shame or embarrassment over your situation. You feel like you're "less than" those who don't have this particular struggle. You worry that if people know, you'll be ostracized, abandoned, alone. And the fact is, you actually might. I might. Talking about it is scary and risky for me. But I'm still me, nothing's changed except what some people know about me.

I don't want to become the poster child for depression. But I do hope to make more progress and have better success dealing with it by not spending so much energy trying to hide the fact of it from everyone. I also hope that by being open about it, I will be able to help others who are also struggling with it. I've met lots of people who struggle with depression lately. It really is at pandemic levels...and countless lives are impacted by it on a daily basis. But there ARE ways to live with it. There IS help. And if something you've tried hasn't worked, there are other things to try.

It's especially crucial to help young people who struggle with depression...because they won't necessarily have the insights and experiences needed to know that there is a different way of being. We lose too many people to this disease of depression. Like the billboard says, it is real. It's an illness just like cancer, or heart disease. But there are effective treatments. In shining light on the subject, I hope to de-stigmatize the condition, and help people think about it differently.

Blessings today:

1. A good therapist
2. Blogging friends
3. Honesty